the new Boeing 787s -- don't let them pass you by (in 2008)!

xpost: the 757 >>>>>>>> any other boeing aircraft in commercial use.

This plane is smaller than the 747.

The best Boeing is the 777, me thinks.

probably not.

Will the future of commercial air travel be point-to-point on medium-sized, highly efficient airplanes (let's hope so), or hub-to-hub on massive, economy-of-scale utilizing planes (let's hope not)?

The A380 is pretty efficient, as planes go, as well, however that efficiency does depend on them being fully loaded, that goes for all planes.

The 787 is Boeing's all new replacement for the 757/767 series of smaller long distance planes. In response to the efficiency games, Airbus has put out a spoiler plane in the form of the A350 derivative (90% new design though) of the A330. Basically it comes from two different views of where air travel is going.

The dreamliner is a point to point airliner, ideal for smaller loading from smaller airports, it could easily be the spring board for inter-continental budget airlines, if it is as efficient as claimed.

The A350 is less radical than the dreamliner, but still a very advanced aircraft with heavy use of composites and should have comparable fuel economies with the 787 mainly through cramming in a few extra seats.

The A380 is about maximising capacity on congested routes from congested airports, Europe-East Coast, Tokyo-Osaka, although it's also been taken by Airlines such as Emirates and Singapore who are locked into hubs in tiny nation states and need to maximise number of seats on planes. You better beleive that someone is going to cram 800 seats on one of these things for the Tokyo Osaka run.

If the A380 is a success then Boeing can always revive it's 747-800 stretched version of the 747.

They'll be space for both in the market as they are going after different niches.

here's hoping. the market is definitely there for that. north america -> asia will do outstandingly well.

Someone needs to be working on powering these planes on vegetable oil/ethanol blends.

lol

why not just stay on yr continent, then you can use the best ever form of transport: train.

Clearly the best advancement in international transport would be to build superfast elevators through the center of the Earth. Something like a pneumatic tube.

http://zapatopi.net/pneumatic/beachsub2.jpg

http://zapatopi.net/pneumatic/beachsub.jpg

http://www.uboatarchive.net/JtOpsCtr11.jpg
Craig keeps a close eye
http://www.uboatarchive.net/JtOpsCtr6.jpg
Jenny updates the big chart

its often said that safety occupies this top spot, but it seems to actually occupy maybe....10th place, priority-wise?

Pretty poorly

Have you ever seen a graphite hockey stick break?

Not really the same stuff. The design the composite to have the mechanical properties for the job.

JBR OTM re: smaller planes, especially in mid-size/small markets. 80% of my flights are on 50-seat regional jets or props, and another 15% are on DC-9s, which aren't really modern aircraft in any sense of the word. Only place I'll ever see these super-planes is across the tarmac while connecting at O'Hare.

Apparently the regional carriers have much less restrictive labor contracts than the majors, so their overhead is lower. The regionals are probably closer to what the future industry will look like.

I do a lot of inter-continental flying, because I live in a foreign country. So I get to fly on 777s all the time (for 13 hours).

What a half-billion dollar A380 gets you: http://gizmodo.com/5279529/inside-the-485+million-airbus-a380-flying-palace

My dad works on the 787 line and says it's the most fubar-ed project he's worked on in 30 years at Boeing. Apparently, instead of building parts in house as they usually do, they sourced out all the individual components and their getting back all these parts from seperate companies that don't fit together. The guys on the line like him have the unenviable task of trying to assemble all these non-matching parts. He blames the fact that the current upper management are all business people without aerospace experience who don't know anything about the realities of building airplanes.

the "jenny updates the big chart" photo upthread is ridiculously cool.

What a A380 hard landing looks like: http://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/exclusivevids/EAAAirVenture2009_AirbusA380_HardLanding_200850-1.html

Wow, do all airliners have that much flex in the wings when they touch down?

Meanwhile, the 787 (now delayed for the fifth time) is possibly just a mediocre aircraft

And ANOTHER delay on the 787

Boeing has discovered microscopic wrinkles in the skin of the 787's fuselage and has ordered Italian supplier Alenia Aeronautica to halt production of fuselage sections at a factory in Italy. 'In two areas on the fuselage, the structure doesn't have the long-term strength that we want,' says Boeing spokeswoman Lori Gunter. To repair the wrinkles, additional layers of carbon composite material are being added to a 787 at the South Carolina factory and twenty-two other planes must also be patched. Production of the 787 has been fraught with problems with ill-fitting parts, casting doubt on Boeing's strategy of relying on overseas suppliers to build big sections of the aircraft before assembling them at its facilities near Seattle. The 787, built for fuel efficiency from lightweight carbon composite parts, is a priority for Boeing as it struggles with dwindling orders amid the global recession. Customers had been expecting the first of the new jets in the first quarter of 2010 — nearly two years earlier than they will be delivered. The delays have cost Boeing credibility and billions of dollars in anticipated expenses and penalties. Orders for 72 planes have been canceled already this year, although Boeing still has confirmed orders for over 800 aircraft."

And perhaps inevitably, Hitler gets news that his order of 787's is going to be delayed again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF_P77VEPKA

lol

And FINALLY.

Boeing's 787 Dreamliner has taken off on its first test flight - almost two and a half years late.
It had been grounded by a series of hitches, including design problems, strikes and even a shortage of bolts.
Boeing has pegged its hopes for the future on the plane, which promises to be one of the most fuel-efficient in the world.
It has attracted some 840 orders from all over the globe, although some have been cancelled because of the delays.
Its popularity is partly thanks to its lightweight design. Made of carbon and titanium, it should reduce fuel consumption as well as save on maintenance costs.
The first test flight is due to last around four hours, as the two pilots examine how the Dreamliner operates.
"They will essentially make sure that the airplane under normal circumstances flies the way it is supposed to," said Boeing spokesman Jim Proulx.

those wings look so delicate

is there anyway to check (in advance of booking) which type of aircraft will be used on your flight? would not fancy going on one of these for say, oooooh, about 10 years?

KAYAK Lets Users Filter Out Boeing 737 Max 9 Flights After Door Blows Off Plane

oof

Nationalize Boeing

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/24/delta-air-lines-plane-nose-wheel-falls-off

More concerns as Alaska Airlines flight arrives at PDX gate with open cargo door
https://www.koin.com/news/alaska-airlines-safety-concerns-cargo-door-pictures-portland/

o_0

Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

It said the 62-year-old had died from a "self-inflicted" wound on 9 March and police were investigating.

Damn

Also this today https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2024/03/11/at-least-50-injured-on-latam-airlines-boeing-787-after-technical-problem-causes-sudden-drop-in-altitude/

Jon Oliver did a good piece on them last week, the gist of it is their only priority right now is shareholder value

I know nothing about financing, stocks, etc. But it seems to me that if I owned a business that I really cared about, I would never take it public.

Really good article that sums up Barnett's (the now dead whistleblower) complaints.

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-03-28-suicide-mission-boeing/

Hm another whistleblower has died.

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/whistleblower-josh-dean-of-boeing-supplier-spirit-aerosystems-has-died/

o_O

those Prospect articles about Barnett are wild

I was going to say something about irony impairment by naming your rejected/not-rejected parts bin MRSA, but fuck this company
https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-04-30-whistleblower-laws-protect-lawbreakers/

Sections 47 and 48 of a 787 Boeing Dreamliner fuselage consist of the back four rows of the plane’s passenger seating, bathrooms, meal prep area, flight attendant seating, and rear exit doors. “Not the kind of thing you could sneak out on the back of a pickup truck,” says Rob Turkewitz, an attorney who represents the estate of John Barnett, the whistleblower who was found dead last month the morning he’d been scheduled to finish a deposition in his whistleblower lawsuit against the company. And yet around 2015, someone caused a massive hunk of this fuselage to vanish from the Material Review Segregation Area (MRSA) of the Charleston, South Carolina, 787 assembly plant, without leaving any kind of paper trail. As near as Turkewitz and his former client have been able to figure, no one ever determined what became of the thing.

what in the fuck

so what, hypothetically, could you do with that if you had ill intent?

I think the point here was that 'losing track' of something like that and not even reporting it is a graphic illustration of how absurdly far Boeing was from compliance with federal regulatory requirements. Whether it was purposeful or accidental wouldn't even matter.

gotcha, jeez

crazy stuff

last company i worked for did tons of business for Boeing - we supplied them with antennas among other things. our company, and i wouldn't be surprised if it was the same with other suppliers, were more and more following the Boeing mentality. we had a locked room that had all the "scrap material" that couldn't be taken to the material shredder until everything was signed off on by quality assurance, the appropriate upper management, the customer, etc. so the fact Boeing had something like that disappear is absolutely wild.

straight up, the FAA doesn't fuck around, so at least i made sure everything i was doing was always by procedure.

for example, products we supplied airlines had to be assembled, painted, tested, etc. at certain approved temperatures and humidity. one year, the facility manager decided that to save some money they were going to hold off on repairing the AC system. flash forward to May/June and the AC hasn't been fixed and a heat wave is going through the area. the production area was hitting 95+ F and terrible humidity. it took program managers to get them to let them know we were violating government regulations to finally get them to fix the AC. but that's the kinda snakey shit i started seeing upper upper management were doing to save a buck/get their next promotion.

yep, and I bet that was x10 at Boeing

Cracks In KC-46 Pegasus Tankers Halt All Deliveries
https://www.twz.com/air/cracks-in-kc-46-pegusus-tankers-halt-all-deliveries

...compendium of Boeing failures continues at link

Something truly post-apocalyptic about seeing an A380 being scrapped... pic.twitter.com/kd4TZMyEwW

— Zaphod Beeblebrox (@Zaphod2042) April 17, 2025

The first, second, and so far only long-haul flights I ever took were on an Airbus A380. My enduring memory is of discovering that the headphone socket for the in-flight entertainment was in the handrest about an hour before landing on the return flight. For a while they were a really common sight in the skies over London because the major customer was Emirates, who bought a huge fleet of them seemingly so that lots of people could fly from London to Dubai.

I remember reading that they couldn't be converted into cargo planes because the top deck wasn't strong enough to carry pallets. If the deck was reinforced the aircraft wouldn't have enough engine power to take off, and in any case it would have been difficult to load the top deck. So unlike the Boeing 747 it didn't have an afterlife as a cargo plane. And the Boeing 777 could land at a much wider range of airports. The only two airports the A380 could land in Spain were Madrid and Tereul, a maintenance facility which isn't open to the public, whereas the 777 could land in Malaga etc.

I learn from the internet that Virgin Atlantic ordered six A380s in 2001, then waited and waited and waited until eventually cancelling their order in 2018 because fuel was just too expensive. They dodged a bullet there. I'm also reminded that during the COVID pandemic Singapore Airlines used one of their A380s as a pop-up restaurant:
https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/singapore-pop-up-restaurant-sells-out-in-30-minutes-trnd/index.html

Customers bought a ticket to sit in a static A380 and have a (presumably freshly-cooked meal). There were also sightseeing "flights to nowhere" that took off and landed from the same runway, giving people the chance to see Antarctica / the Southern Lights / Hong Kong etc from the air without having to pass through international arrivals. Like in Dawn of the Dead, where the undead instinctively flocked to a shopping mall, because they were re-enacting their former lives.

Ten year old documentary on Boeing and the 787 suddenly relevant

Our journalism reveals the deeply-held safety concerns of current and former Boeing engineers, who in some cases fear to fly on the 787, the plane they build.

We uncover allegations of on-the-job drug use, quality control problems and poor workmanship.

We explore the roots of the battery problems that led to the plane’s grounding due to safety concerns for three months from January 2013.

For more on the investigation, visit http://www.aljazeera.com/boeing787

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvkEpstd9os

so uh, air india... pilot cut off the fuel switches? both of them?

Accidentally, without knowing, it seems

consensus i've seen is deliberate - murder-suicide :(

the older pilot, in his early 50's only had a few more flights left until he was due to retire and dedicate all his time to being a f/t carer for his elderly dad.

jfc

There's an investigation under way that will likely take months before we have a conclusion based on all the facts, so nothing conclusive can be drawn at this stage.

I find it implausible that they both planned a suicide right after take-off and exchanged last words ("did you cut the fuel off ? no I didn't") to simulate an accident / muddle the investigation. Or that even the copilot turned them off discretely when they're in the middle of the deck, denied doing it in conversation, they put them back on, and crashed to their death. Accidentally doing so also seems highly unlikely. Meanwhile there's this fuel control switch being installed with the locking feature disengaged + FAA issuing a non-mandatory directive not carried out by Air India... All this to say that the cause is still very open and it's premature to lean one way or the other.

Still amazed that one guy survived, relatively unscathed.

I haven't seen anyone suggest that they planned a suicide together. And they haven't said who said what, as far as I know.

Most likely to me seems that one cut the fuel, then asked the other pilot "did you cut the fuel off" to muddle the investigation and try to direct blame / deflect shame on his family. Then the other pilot tried to turn them back on, but it was too late.

But you are right ... we do not know for sure, but an accident seems unlikely.

Bright spot for Boeing then!

Also every time is see this thread I get Ringo singing “Don’t Pass Me By” in my head.

There is an ex-pilot saying this still could be a Boeing hardware fuck-up, some dodgy chip that needed remedial work that never happened or some kind of vmic Boeing sounding shit like that. FAA says their fuel switches are fine ... yada yada. You couldn't pay me to get inside one of them flying-deathtrap pieces of shit.

There was a rumor in the flightsim community that switch->CUTOFF was how you reset the 787 in MSFS but now its impossible to search anything related to this